Kanù Revitalizing an Old Town With Iconic Restaurant, Bar + Entertainment Design​

Before Design

The building arrived as a failing structure, which meant the work started with assessment rather than renderings — what the building could still do, and what it would cost to make it do more.

The bones were typical of 19th-century masonry construction: reinforced timber floor joists, a few iron columns, tongue and groove hardwood floors. Buildings like this were built to carry freight, so the structure was sound. What sat on top of it was era-specific cheap infill, and decades of economic stagnation meant almost none of it had been touched.

Bringing a building like this back starts with gut demolition of everything but the original structure. That resets the typology and lets the architect address the things that decide whether the building can hold people at all — egress, fire separation, structural reinforcement for floor deflection, acoustics, universal access, fire suppression.

Function comes before flavor. Only once those were solved could the design turn to what the room would feel like.

Governing Concepts

Four requirements shaped the plan before anything else.

Two means of egress. Separate and distinct exits on every floor, with travel distances and signage that work when a full house needs to leave at once.

Fully sprinklered. Complete coverage throughout — supply, heads, piping, valves — in a building that had none.

Fire separation between floors. Fire-rated assemblies at every floor line, so three venues can operate simultaneously without one compromising the others.

Kitchen exhaust. Two kitchens on the ground floor, one conventional and one solid fuel, each with its own ventilation requirements for smoke, grease, and odor.

The Ground Floor

The restaurant is a 150-seat assembly space designed for family dining, with a bar and two bathrooms placed for accessibility rather than convenience.

Behind it sits the working half of the floor.

Conventional kitchen — standard appliances and equipment for the farm-to-table menu: workstations, cooking ranges, ovens, refrigeration, and the fixtures that go with them.

Solid fuel grill kitchen — a separate kitchen dedicated to cooking over a solid fuel source, with its own ventilation and specialized equipment. A Le Panyol wood-fired oven and a Grillworks wood-fired grill, with the oven surround by Maine Wood Heat. Solid fuel cooking carries different code requirements than a conventional line, and the two kitchens were designed and ventilated as separate systems.

Wait staff area — a work zone for serving trays, POS systems, and the supplies service runs on.

Walk-in refrigeration — storage for perishables, ingredients, and stock.

Laundry room — dedicated space for the restaurant’s linen and uniform cleaning.

At the front, a lobby handles the transition from the street into the restaurant, and a greeting area with seating gives waiting guests somewhere to be.

The layout came from the site as much as from the program. Buildings abut Kanù on both sides, so natural light, utilities, and ventilation all had to come from the front or the rear. Utility entrances came in off Main Street. The rear was the only place kitchen exhaust could go — so the kitchen went to the rear, which kept the street-facing facade intact.

The rear datum also sits higher than the front, which required a ramped approach for accessible entry. Bathrooms were pushed toward the rear, landing at a midpoint in the plan. Universal design was the standard throughout: anywhere an able-bodied guest can go, a guest in a wheelchair can go.

Midway through schematic design the client acquired the buildings on either side, which added an elevator and turned three separate structures into one interconnected complex.

Materials

The dining room is broken into zones — privacy where it’s wanted, openness where it isn’t. Sweeping ceiling elements move the room away from a rectilinear box and tie the zones together.

The entry sets the tone with an antique lectern from Soll’s in Canaan. Custom velvet furniture and pieces by Kellex give the room weight. The hardwood flooring was salvaged from the building next door.

Interlam wall coverings, Plyboo bamboo soffits, and Tilebar tile carry the texture. Reclaimed timber from Maine Heritage Timber and masonry work by Pat Manley Masonry. CNC fabrication came out of the University of Maine’s Material Science Lab. Architectural lighting by Greg Day Lighting — old-world fixtures with warm hues and intricate detail, placed to pick out the building’s features rather than flatten them.

Restored brick runs behind all of it — cleaned, repaired, and left visible, so the 19th-century building stays present in a contemporary room rather than being covered over. Familiar materials, reinterpreted: wood, stone, and metal in contemporary forms against a structure that predates all of it.

Timeline

The client approached Ervin Architecture in 2017 for renderings of a three-venue vision — restaurant, nightclub, rooftop lounge. Those renderings secured the building.

Construction ran into the pandemic. Supply chains, costs, and crew safety all had to be managed while the work continued.